Section 6; Dirty Earth, 2121

Section 6; 2121 Dirty Earth.

I re-visit these sites, places, there are maybe a half dozen regular stops on my intergalactic trans dimensional journey. There is still so much I have no explanation for, so much nonsense and insanity that I can’t fathom how we even get as far as we do.

There was something lost along that journey, I can never find out exactly when it happened.

I’ve never seen them, but I imagine my great grandkids are in this ‘Dirty Earth’ era, waiting to know if they are included on the last ships out. I hope they made it out because this place is beyond insane. Martial law has been long imposed. There is little to none central banking systems or government in place. They do finally have decent flying machines though, I will give them that, sleek looking designs of power and speed that have been discarded by the wealthy. It’s about 2121, I guess. They might even have children of their own. My boys…I try and stop projecting when I get here, but I am stuck next to this asshole again (yes, I’ve been here before), he’s not as bad as a robot but I still don’t like him.

Reminds me too much of my father, of myself; he’s always trying to make something right and says little. I can’t figure out exactly what it is he’s doing- some type of transport. The word illegal has no value in these times. There are few institutions of power and many kangaroo courts in the charlatan halls of religious zealots and warlords. The man travels from one fallen metropolis to the next in his bad ass craft. He does not stop, like a wolf constantly stalking prey. He mostly sleeps in the machine and quite frequently ingests some vapor like substance through his eyeballs.

I’ve watched him kill many times; my vision always clears when the violence escalates. Some of them were warranted actions, some questionable, but I have seen him use discretion when it has come to children. He is principled, I just wish he would stop with the constant routine of travel across the damaged Earth- it only makes me long for the thing I cannot have even more.

The abandoned planet’s animal and plant life has made a rapid return. Our rocket ship crosses over miles and miles of overgrowth that consume the cities below. This transformation process strangles the fallen steel and half-mile high trash by growing in and around its new environs. Coyotes, rodents and sea gulls now live in spacious penthouses. Caribou roam the mega structures of Detroit and jungles consume whole swaths of what was southern America.

My country. I try and disassociate from that as well. At this point the humans are too beaten to make any damage so Mother Nature reigns unencumbered. The people left deal in survival not dollars, finally the same currency as their host planet; the playing field has been leveled.

We are gliding across a land reclaimed by wood and wolves when his machine malfunctions. He is trying his best to keep the vehicle in the air, but it is of no use. We spiral uncontrollable downward.

I stay with him throughout the crash. He never notices me sitting in the passenger seat - even during the frantic moments before colliding into the pines. After surviving the harrowing accident, he sets out on foot and I gravitate alongside as he heads off to complete his mission. He prays to no God and holds a weapon in each hand. The forest grows dark, the calls of the nocturnal chime and the mist rolls in and around the tall trees.

Hundreds of miles away static air bases release drones into the orbit to begin their hunt for him. He knows they are coming. He tries to disguise his tracks with errant codes and incorrect locations, but he knows eventually they will find him.

The wolves come for him as well, but he kills them all. The strange travelers glowing with radiation that try and ambush him; all forty of them, dead. Same for the wild hogs and the long-haired men on horseback.

He’s a good shot but cannot escape the drones. In the morning from out of the wild forest they arrive and kill him for ‘being out of district’. He tries to escape, even takes a few of the digital death gnats down before they finally surround him. He dies in this no man’s land where no one comes for him except the creatures of the next night.